Asus Unveils ZenBook 3 Ultrabook, 3 New ZenFones

Asus showered its high-end smartphone and notebook lineups with performance injections and design makeovers today at the Computex electronics show in Taiwan, adding three ZenFones and the ZenBook 3 to its mobile offerings.

The ZenBook 3 an ultralight ultrabook. It weighs just 910 grams (almost exactly 2 pounds), compared to the 12-inch Macbook's 2.04 pounds. At 12.5 inches, the ZenBook 3's screen is also slightly larger than the Macbook's.

Its Corning GorillaGlass 4 coating makes it tough, and the extremely thin bezel makes it stand out from the rest of the notebook. Asus says the ZenBook 3 has a 82 percent screen-to-body ratio.

Speaking of the body, it's made of aerospace-grade aluminum alloy instead of the magnesium alloy of other notebooks. The quest to save weight likely motivated Asus' decision to use aluminium alloy, which is also found in several other portable devices like the HP Elite x2 tablet.

Underneath the aluminum is an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of 2133MHz RAM and—you guessed it—a USB Type-C port. That's the same port that gave MacBook owners some consternation due to a lack of things to plug into it, though many more peripherals are now Type-C compatible.

Hard drive options max out at a 1TB PCIe x4 SSD. The battery lasts for nine hours, and can be recharged up to 60 percent in less than an hour.

It's worth noting that Asus loses both the screen size and weight competitions to the Lenovo LaVie Z HZ550's 1.87 pounds and 13.3-inch display. Pricing for the ZenBook 3, which Lenovo didn't announce today, could therefore be a key differentiator, especially if it comes in somewhere between or below the Macbook's $1,599 and the HZ550's $1,699 price tags.

Joining Asus' smartphone lineup are three new models, the ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Deluxe, and ZenFone 3 Ultra. The base model has a 5.5-inch Full HD display and is powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, introduced in February.

The Deluxe is roughly the same size, but comes with more photography prowess. Its 23 megapixel camera has a Sony IMX318 image sensor, a f/2.0 aperture lens, and optical image stabilization. It can also shoot 4k video.

The Ultra has a larger 6.8-inch Full HD screen and the same camera as the Deluxe. Its 4600mAh battery can also be used as a power bank to charge other deviecs. All three phones have USB Type-C charging ports and fingerprint sensors mounted on the rear for unlocking.